You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!

Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.

Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.

Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Slackware comes with 2 different bootloaders, but installs LILO by default. I'm wondering how many people have made a choice to use the other bootloader, syslinux/extlinux (which also supports btrfs in case you have chosen to use that).

On my new box where I am running -current, I'm changing things around a lot, including re-install from scratch when some things change in the -current evolution, just to see how it goes. I have a lot of partitions set up to do all these things, and I find syslinux makes it easier (I don't need to re-run the lilo command in its correct environment every time ... doing so after an install loses bootability of other partitions at the outset).

And when I start working on my project of putting 14.1 (when it's ready) on an AWS EC2 AMI, that will need to use grub as a boot loader (I hate grub, but they have "bootloader in kernel image" ready to use there, and it does work with Slackware).

I've always found extlinux extremely easy to work with: install with `extlinux -i /boot/extlinux`, write /usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin to the MBR, and write a 4-line /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf (and remember to update it whenever you change kernels). No fussing with update commands or anything like that, and none of this even needs to be done while booted into the target system (I often install extlinux on a new Slackware system using Parted Magic if I forget to do it before the post-setup reboot, for instance).

One feature I'd like to see in syslinux is an "include" directive in the configuration file syntax, e.g. "include /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf.d/*.conf" - that way, I could automatically generate a syslinux configuration file snippet for my custom kernel and write it to $PKG/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf.d/$KVER.conf in the kernel's Slackware package. It's a minor thing, but it'd save me having to edit extlinux.conf manually every time I install a new kernel, which is inherently accident-prone.

I've always found extlinux extremely easy to work with: install with `extlinux -i /boot/extlinux`, write /usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin to the MBR, and write a 4-line /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf (and remember to update it whenever you change kernels). No fussing with update commands or anything like that, and none of this even needs to be done while booted into the target system (I often install extlinux on a new Slackware system using Parted Magic if I forget to do it before the post-setup reboot, for instance).

One feature I'd like to see in syslinux is an "include" directive in the configuration file syntax, e.g. "include /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf.d/*.conf" - that way, I could automatically generate a syslinux configuration file snippet for my custom kernel and write it to $PKG/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf.d/$KVER.conf in the kernel's Slackware package. It's a minor thing, but it'd save me having to edit extlinux.conf manually every time I install a new kernel, which is inherently accident-prone.

One possible alternative (I've started doing something similar) is to have a script that generates the config. It would look for all kernels you have installed and include them in the new config file. But yeah, it would be nice to have a way to boot whatever is there without having to do these things. I have been thinking of trying to write my own command program to run under syslinux (for the purpose of a different menu style). If I get there, I'll keep this idea in mind.

I'm using grub2 because I like its ability to find and boot kernels interactively at boot time. That and I was thinking I'd want to try the Hurd sometime and maybe a little emotional attachment from once having made a small patch to it.

In retrospect, I probably should have stuck with lilo, since I haven't needed any special features and don't expect to any time soon.